Description

The oil and gas industry is a competitive market that requires high-performance assets that can be translated into high operational availability, production efficiency, reliability, and maintainability of all assets. Nowadays, to achieve such high performance, it is necessary to extend this expectation to vendors. Therefore reliability engineering tools are very important to this industry and have contributed greatly to its success during the last several decades.

Indeed, for companies with assets such as operational plants, platforms, and other facilities, quantitative and qualitative techniques are required during different phases of the life cycle. In project (concept, predesign, and design) and operational phases, DFMEA, SFMEA, RCM, RBI, WA, FRACAS, ReBI, ReGBI, ORT, RAM, APO, and HRA can be applied to support decisions for achieving and maintaining high performance in plant facilities and equipment. In addition, safety is one of the most important performance aspects of the oil and gas industry, and quantitative risk analysis methods, such as FTA, ETA, LOPA, SIL, and bow tie analysis, as well as qualitative risk analysis such as HAZOP, HAZID, PHA, and FMEA, can be implemented during the project (concept, predesign, and design) and operational phases.

Moreover, when equipment is being developed by vendors, ALT, HALT, RGA, and DFMEA are highly important for supporting product development and achieving the performance targets defined in WA by oil and gas companies.

This book discusses all of these techniques and includes examples applied to the oil and gas industry. In addition, reliability engineering program implementation as well as asset management is introduced with examples and case studies.

Asset management aims to drive action to achieve high-performance assets during the life cycle phases. Asset management is integrated with the company’s strategy, business plan, and performance at all organization levels. Therefore reliability engineering plays an important role in an asset management program that encompasses asset integrity and integrated logistic support programs, as will be described in this book.

To present all reliability engineering methods as well as reliability engineering program and asset management concepts and applications, this book is organized into different chapters as follows.